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We present an ab initio method for computing vibro-polariton and phonon-polariton spectra of molecules and solids coupled to the photon modes of optical cavities. We demonstrate that if interactions of cavity photon modes with both nuclear and electronic degrees of freedom are treated on the level of the cavity Born–Oppenheimer approximation, spectra can be expressed in terms of the matter response to electric fields and nuclear displacements, which are readily available in standard density functional perturbation theory implementations. In this framework, results over a range of cavity parameters can be obtained without the need for additional electronic structure calculations, enabling efficient calculations on a wide range of parameters. Furthermore, this approach enables results to be more readily interpreted in terms of the more familiar cavity-independent molecular electric field response properties, such as polarizability and Born effective charges, which enter into the vibro-polariton calculation. Using corresponding electric field response properties of bulk insulating systems, we are also able to obtain the Γ point phonon-polariton spectra of two dimensional (2D) insulators. Results for a selection of cavity-coupled molecular and 2D crystal systems are presented to demonstrate the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although widely studied experimentally in the 1990s, the structure and properties of low-dimensional or high-pressure phases of fullerenes have recently been re-examined. Remarkably, recent experiments have shown that transparent, nearly pure amorphous sp3-bonded carbon phases can be obtained by heating a C60 molecular crystal at a high pressure. With the additional aim of testing the ability of three classical carbon potentials reactive empirical bond order, environment-dependent interatomic potential, and reactive force-field to reproduce these results, we investigate the details of the structural transformations undergone by fullerene crystals over a wide range of pressures and temperatures. All the potentials tested show that the initial polymerization of fullerenes is accompanied by negative thermal expansion, albeit in slightly different ranges. However, more significant differences in structural and mechanical properties are observed in the amorphous phases, in particular the sp3 carbon fraction and the existence of layered amorphous carbon. Overall, these results indicate to which extent classical reactive potentials can be used to explore phase transitions over a wide range of pressures and temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pentacene is an important model organic semiconductor in both the singlet exciton fission (SF) and organic electronics communities. We have investigated the effect of changing crystal structure on the SF process, generating multiple triplet excitons from an initial singlet exciton, and subsequent triplet recombination. Unlike for similar organic semiconductors that have strong SF sensitive to polymorphism, we find almost no quantitative difference between the kinetics of triplet pair (TT) formation in the two dominant polymorphs of pentacene. Both pairwise dimer coupling and momentum-space crystal models predict much faster TT formation from the bright singlet excited state of the Bulk vs ThinFilm polymorph, contrasting with the experiment. GW and Bethe–Salpeter equation calculations, including exciton–phonon coupling, reveal that ultrafast phonon-driven transitions in the ThinFilm polymorph compensate the intrinsically slower purely Coulomb-mediated TT formation channel, rationalizing the similarity in observed rates. Taking into account the influence of subtle structural distinctions on both the direct and phonon-mediated SF pathways reveals a predictive capability to these methods, expected to be applicable to a wide variety of molecular crystals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organic–inorganic hybrid perovskite quantum wells exhibit electronic structures with properties intermediate between those of inorganic semiconductors and molecular crystals. In these systems, periodic layers of organic spacer molecules occupy the interstitial spaces between perovskite sheets, thereby confining electronic excitations to two dimensions. Here, we investigate spectroscopic line broadening mechanisms for phonons coupled to excitons in lead-iodide layered perovskites with phenyl ethyl ammonium (PEA) and azobenzene ethyl ammonium (AzoEA) spacer cations. Using a modified Elliot line shape analysis for the absorbance and photoluminescence spectra, polaron binding energies of 11.2 and 17.5 meV are calculated for (PEA)2PbI4 and (AzoEA)2PbI4, respectively. To determine whether the polaron stabilization processes influence the dephasing mechanisms of coupled phonons, five-pulse coherent Raman spectroscopies are applied to the two systems under electronically resonant conditions. The prominence of inhomogeneous line broadening mechanisms detected in (AzoEA)2PbI4 suggests that thermal fluctuations involving the deformable organic phase broaden the distributions of phonon frequencies within the quantum wells. In addition, our data indicate that polaron stabilization primarily involves photoinduced reorganization of the organic phases for both systems, whereas the impulsively excited phonons represent less than 10% of the total polaron binding energy. The signal generation mechanisms associated with our fifth-order coherent Raman experiments are explored with a perturbative model in which cumulant expansions are used to account for time-coincident vibrational dephasing and polaron stabilization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The century-long problem of conversion of plastic work to heat is controversial and challenging. In this work, 2D and 3D molecular simulations of crystal Cu are carried out to study the micro-mechanism of plastic work converting to heat. The results show that heat generation comes along with lattice restoration, transferring part of potential energy of defects, i.e., stored energy of cold work (SECW), to kinetic energy. As a result, specific crystallographic defects generate amounts of heat corresponding to variations of their SECW. If the change of microstructure and temperature are only detected at the surface of the system, the time lag of heat generation will be observed. The simulation results are indispensable accompaniments of experimental research, unveiling how plastic heat is affected by the type, propagation path, and density of defects, providing nano-scale explanations for the time lag of temperature rising in experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The description of electronic properties of low bandgap molecular system is often performed by using density functional theory (DFT) and time dependent (TD) DFT calculations with the optimally tuned range-separated hybrid (OT-RSH) functional, as it contains the necessary ingredients to reliably predict charge transfer excitations. However, the range separating parameter (ω) is system-dependent and its optimization, including the chemical environment, is intricate. Refaely-Abramson et al. demonstrated that the gap renormalization in molecular crystals, a ground state property, can be represented by an OT-RSH functional screened by ɛstatic [Phys. Rev. B 88, 081204(R) (2013)], the zero frequency scalar dielectric constant. In this study, we propose the use of an OT-RSH functional screened by the scalar dielectric constant in the high frequency limit (OT-sRSH), ɛ∞, an appropriate constraint for vertical ionization energies or excitations in a dielectric environment. We have performed calculations for S,N-heteroacene derivatives in tetrahydrofuran and dichloromethane. The "unscreened" OT-RSH functional tends to underestimate experimental ionization potentials (IPs) and optical gaps (Egs) by up to 1.5 and 0.5 eV, respectively. In contrast, OT-sRSH functional calculations underestimate IPs and Egs by only 0.4 and 0.2 eV. We also compared the OT-sRSH results to explicitly solvated OT-RSH functional calculations for oligothiophenes in dioxane, benzene in ammonia, and methylene blue in water. We observe that both the approaches perform similarly for weakly interacting intermolecular systems and deviate for solvent–solute interacting systems, as expected. In conclusion, the OT-sRSH functional can describe molecular systems with environmental polarization effects accurately, a step toward describing realistic molecular systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The random-phase approximation (RPA) includes a subset of higher than second-order correlation-energy contributions, but stays in the same complexity class as the second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) in both Gaussian-orbital and plane-wave codes. This makes RPA a promising ab initio electronic structure approach for the binding energies of molecular crystals. Still, some issues stand out in practical applications of RPA. Notably, compact clusters of nonpolar molecules are poorly described, and the interaction energies strongly depend on the reference single-determinant state. Using the many-body expansion of the binding energy of a crystal, we investigate those issues and the effect of beyond-RPA corrections. We find the beneficial effect of quartic-scaling exchange and non-ring coupled-cluster doubles corrections. The nonadditive interactions in compact trimers of molecules are improved by using the self-consistent Hartree–Fock orbitals instead of the usual Kohn–Sham states, but this kind of orbital input also leads to underestimated dimer energies. Overall, a substantial improvement over the RPA with a renormalized singles approach is possible at a modest quartic-scaling cost, which encourages further research into additional RPA corrections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding core level shifts in aromatic compounds is crucial for the correct interpretation of x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), including acenes, as well as of styrenic polymers, which are increasingly relevant for the microelectronic industry, among other applications. The effect of delocalization through π aromatic systems on the stabilization of valence molecular orbitals has been widely investigated in the past. However, little has been reported on the impact on the deeper C1s core energy levels. In this work, we use first-principles calculations at the level of many body perturbation theory to compute the C1s binding energies of several aromatic systems. We report a C1s red shift in PAHs and acenes of increasing size, both in the gas phase and in the molecular crystal. C1s red shifts are also calculated for stacked benzene and naphthalene pairs at decreasing intermolecular distances. A C1s red shift is in addition found between oligomers of poly(p-hydroxystyrene) and polystyrene of increasing length, which we attribute to ring–ring interactions between the side-chains. The predicted shifts are larger than common instrumental errors and could, therefore, be detected in XPS experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular crystals are difficult to model with accurate first-principles methods due to large unit cells. On the other hand, accurate modeling is required as polymorphs often differ by only 1 kJ/mol. Machine learning interatomic potentials promise to provide accuracy of the baseline first-principles methods with a cost lower by orders of magnitude. Using the existing databases of the density functional theory calculations for molecular crystals and molecules, we train global machine learning interatomic potentials, usable for any molecular crystal. We test the performance of the potentials on experimental benchmarks and show that they perform better than classical force fields and, in some cases, are comparable to the density functional theory calculations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use molecular dynamics simulations to unravel the physics underpinning the light-induced density changes caused by the dynamic trans–cis–trans isomerization cycles of azo-mesogens embedded in a liquid crystal polymer network, an intriguing experimental observation reported in the literature. We employ two approaches, cyclic and probabilistic switching of isomers, to simulate dynamic isomerization. The cyclic switching of isomers confirms that dynamic isomerization can lead to density changes at specific switch-time intervals. The probabilistic switching approach further deciphers the physics behind the non-monotonous relation between density reduction and light intensities observed in experiments. Light intensity variations in experiments are accounted for in simulations by varying the trans–cis and cis–trans isomerization probabilities. The simulations show that an optimal combination of these two probabilities results in a maximum density reduction, corroborating the experimental observations. At such an optimal combination of probabilities, the dynamic trans–cis–trans isomerization cycles occur at a specific frequency, causing significant distortion in the polymer network, resulting in a maximum density reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extension of a constitutive law for 1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene (TATB) is proposed with a focus on the calibration of a crystal plasticity law. TATB, a highly anisotropic energetic molecular crystal used in explosive formulations, can be subjected to high-pressure and high-temperature conditions, either under high strain-rate deformation or shock loading. The existing thermodynamically consistent model, fully informed by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, includes nonlinear elasticity as well as a phase-field by reaction pathway formalism under large strain for the modeling of TATB behavior upon pressure as well as its well-known twinning–buckling deformation mechanism. However, it has been observed that TATB single crystal can accommodate large deformations through dislocation-mediated plasticity, a feature not included in the mesoscale model. In the present work, we take advantage of the microscopic flow surface, previously computed through MD calculations, to calibrate a crystal plasticity law, extending the capability of the continuum model currently limited to low velocity impacts and moderate strain rate. Indeed, the microscopic flow surface, defined as a 3D stress-at-first-defect-nucleation contains all information about TATB single crystal mechanical response under directional shear loading, including twinning, buckling, and plastic events. The calibration process uses differential evolution optimization to calibrate TATB basal and transverse slip systems critical stresses to reproduce the microscopic flow surface. Finally, the response of a TATB single crystal to directional loading is investigated in order to evaluate the new model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modeling excited state processes in molecular crystals is relevant for several applications. A popular approach for studying excited state molecular crystals is to use cluster models embedded in point charges. In this paper, we compare the performance of several embedding models in predicting excited states and S1–S0 optical gaps for a set of crystals from the X23 molecular crystal database. The performance of atomic charges based on ground or excited states was examined for cluster models, Ewald embedding, and self-consistent approaches. We investigated the impact of various factors, such as the level of theory, basis sets, embedding models, and the level of localization of the excitation. We consider different levels of theory, including time-dependent density functional theory and Tamm–Dancoff approximation (TDA) (DFT functionals: ωB97X-D and PBE0), CC2, complete active space self-consistent field, and CASPT2. We also explore the impact of selection of the QM region, charge leakage, and level of theory for the description of different kinds of excited states. We implemented three schemes based on distance thresholds to overcome overpolarization and charge leakage in molecular crystals. Our findings are compared against experimental data, G0W0-BSE, periodic TDA, and optimally tuned screened range-separated functionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular dynamics simulations were used to analyze the mechanical properties and failure processes of poly(p-phenylene-terephthalamide) (PPTA), poly(p-phenylene-benzimidazole-terephthalamide) (PBIA), PBIA–PPTA (formed by 1:1 copolymerization of PPTA and PBIA), and poly(p-phenylene-benzobisoxazole) (PBO) crystals at different strain rates and temperatures. The failure stress and strain were found to be linear with the temperature and logarithmic strain rate. Moreover, based on the kinetic theory of fracture and the comprehensive simulation results, we formulated a model that describes the failure stress of the aforementioned crystals under varying strain rates and temperatures. Through the analysis of the failure process, we found that in PPTA, PBIA, and PBIA–PPTA crystals, the bond failure probability is correlated with the strain rate and temperature. The examination of bond lengths and angles unveiled that bonds with larger initial aligning angles are more susceptible to failure during the strain process. Intriguingly, the stretching process induced a conformational change in the PBO molecular chain, leading to a deviation from the linear relation in its stress–strain curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Periodic density functional theory was employed to investigate the impact of chemical modifications on the properties of π-conjugated acenedithiophene molecular crystals. Here, we highlight the importance of the β-methylthionation effect, the position of the sulfur atoms of the thiacycle group and their size, and the number of central benzene rings in the chemical modification strategy. Our results show that the introduction of the methylthio groups at the β-positions of the thiophene and the additional benzene ring at the center of the BDT crystal structure are a promising strategy to improve the performance of organic semiconductors, as observed experimentally. We found that β-MT-ADT exhibits large charge carrier mobility, which is in good agreement with the experimental results and comparable to that of rubrene. In addition, the electronic and optical properties of these ambipolar materials suggest promising performances with β-MT-ADT > ADT > β -MT-NDT > NDT > BEDT-BDT > β -MT-BDT > BDT. Moreover, functionalization with thiacycle-fused sulfur atoms of different sizes and numbers improve the properties of BDT but is still less efficient than the methylthionation effect. Overall, our findings suggest a promising molecular modification strategy for possibly high performance ambipolar organic semiconducting materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computing the solubility of crystals in a solvent using atomistic simulations is notoriously challenging due to the complexities and convergence issues associated with free-energy methods, as well as the slow equilibration in direct-coexistence simulations. This paper introduces a molecular-dynamics workflow that simplifies and robustly computes the solubility of molecular or ionic crystals. This method is considerably more straightforward than the state-of-the-art, as we have streamlined and optimised each step of the process. Specifically, we calculate the chemical potential of the crystal using the gas-phase molecule as a reference state, and employ the S0 method to determine the concentration dependence of the chemical potential of the solute. We use this workflow to predict the solubilities of sodium chloride in water, urea polymorphs in water, and paracetamol polymorphs in both water and ethanol. Our findings indicate that the predicted solubility is sensitive to the chosen potential energy surface. Furthermore, we note that the harmonic approximation often fails for both molecular crystals and gas molecules at or above room temperature, and that the assumption of an ideal solution becomes less valid for highly soluble substances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytic equations of state (EOS) are intended to reproduce theoretical and experimental data in a single phase portion of the thermodynamic space. We devise a complete and thermodynamically consistent model with four distinct features: (1) a reference isotherm that remains thermodynamically stable, (2) a flexible specific heat model based on a fourth-order rational polynomial, (3) a Grüneisen parameter that depends on specific volume and temperature, and (4) pressure and internal energy functions that can be inverted analytically in temperature. The model aims to improve the accuracy of existing equations of state while remaining computationally efficient. To demonstrate its features, we include calibrations for single-crystal pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), liquid nitromethane (NM), and hexagonal close-packed beryllium (Be) metal. The parameter optimization uses the specific heat capacity, Grüneisen parameter, and static compression curves obtained from density functional theory for the crystalline solids and molecular dynamics simulations for liquid NM. We also present a velocity autocorrelation function that yields accurate phonon densities of states for the EOS calibration from the molecular dynamics trajectories. Each of the three calibrations is constrained to enforce the ambient state from experimental measurements and validated against experimental Hugoniot data from multiple sources. We also include one-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the isentropic compression experiments for beryllium conducted at the Z facility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shock-induced plasticity and structural changes in energetic molecular crystals are well documented. These processes couple with the leading shock wave and affect its propagation, resulting in long, transient responses that are challenging to capture with all-atom simulations due to their time scale. Hence, the effects of this coupling and the transient shock response on the formation of hotspots and the initiation of chemistry remain unclear. To address these challenges, we investigate the role of shock-induced plastic deformation on shock initiation with a recently developed particle-based, coarse-grain model for 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazinane (RDX) that utilizes the generalized dissipative particle dynamics with reactions framework. This model enables reactive simulations at micron length scales, which are required to achieve steady-state shock propagation. The simulations show that the shock Hugoniot response of RDX can involve transient behavior for up to 150 ps before steady-state behavior is achieved for shock strengths above the elastic limit. Pore collapse simulations demonstrate that the intensity of the resulting hotspot will weaken as the shock transitions from transient to steady-state behavior, ultimately affecting the shock-to-deflagration transition. Our results highlight the importance of considering the mesoscopic effects of shock-induced plastic deformation in simulations of shock-to-deflagration transitions of high explosives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study properties of nitrogen at high pressure and temperature (100–120 GPa, 2000–3000 K) where molecular and polymeric phases compete both in solid and liquid phase. We employ ab initio MD simulations with the SCAN functional and study the pressure-induced polymerization in liquid nitrogen for system sizes up to 288 atoms in order to reduce finite-size effects. The transition is studied upon both compression and decompression, and at 3000 K, it is found to take place between 110 and 115 GPa, coming close to experimental data. We also simulate the molecular crystalline phase close to the melting line and analyze its structure. We show that the molecular crystal in this regime is highly disordered, in particular, due to pronounced orientational and also translational disorder of the molecules. Its short-range order and vibrational density of states are very close to those of the molecular liquid revealing that the system likely represents a plastic crystal with high entropy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The many-body expansion (MBE) is promising for the efficient, parallel computation of lattice energies in organic crystals. Very high accuracy should be achievable by employing coupled-cluster singles, doubles, and perturbative triples at the complete basis set limit [CCSD(T)/CBS] for the dimers, trimers, and potentially tetramers resulting from the MBE, but such a brute-force approach seems impractical for crystals of all but the smallest molecules. Here, we investigate hybrid or multi-level approaches that employ CCSD(T)/CBS only for the closest dimers and trimers and utilize much faster methods like Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) for more distant dimers and trimers. For trimers, MP2 is supplemented with the Axilrod–Teller–Muto (ATM) model of three-body dispersion. MP2(+ATM) is shown to be a very effective replacement for CCSD(T)/CBS for all but the closest dimers and trimers. A limited investigation of tetramers using CCSD(T)/CBS suggests that the four-body contribution is entirely negligible. The large set of CCSD(T)/CBS dimer and trimer data should be valuable in benchmarking approximate methods for molecular crystals and allows us to see that a literature estimate of the core-valence contribution of the closest dimers to the lattice energy using just MP2 was overbinding by 0.5 kJ mol−1, and an estimate of the three-body contribution from the closest trimers using the T0 approximation in local CCSD(T) was underbinding by 0.7 kJ mol−1. Our CCSD(T)/CBS best estimate of the 0 K lattice energy is −54.01 kJ mol−1, compared to an estimated experimental value of −55.3 ± 2.2 kJ mol−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structural evolution with pressure of icy mixtures of simple molecules is a poorly explored field despite the fundamental role they play in setting the properties of the crustal icy layer of the outer planets and of their satellites. Water and ammonia are the two major components of these mixtures, and the crystal properties of the two pure systems and of their compounds have been studied at high pressures in a certain detail. On the contrary, the study of their heterogeneous crystalline mixtures whose properties, due to the strong N–H⋯O and O–H⋯N hydrogen bonds, can be substantially altered with respect to the individual species has so far been overlooked. In this work, we performed a comparative Raman study with a high spatial resolution of the lattice phonon spectrum of both pure ammonia and water–ammonia mixtures in a pressure range of great interest for modeling the properties of icy planets' interiors. Lattice phonon spectra represent the spectroscopic signature of the molecular crystals' structure. The activation of a phonon mode in plastic NH3-III attests to a progressive reduction in the orientational disorder, which corresponds to a site symmetry reduction. This spectroscopic hallmark allowed us to solve the pressure evolution of H2O–NH3–AHH (ammonia hemihydrate) solid mixtures, which present a remarkably different behavior from the pure crystals likely to be ascribed to the role of the strong H-bonds between water and ammonia molecules characterizing the crystallites' surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the contribution of three-body dispersion to crystal lattice energies, we compute the three-body contributions to the lattice energies for crystalline benzene, carbon dioxide, and triazine using various computational methods. We show that these contributions converge quickly as the intermolecular distances between the monomers grow. In particular, the smallest value among the three pairwise intermonomer closest-contact distances, Rmin, shows a strong correlation with the three-body contribution to the lattice energy, and, here, the largest of the closest-contact distances, Rmax, serves as a cutoff criterion to limit the number of trimers to be considered. We considered all trimers up to R max = 15 A ̊ . The trimers with R min < 4 A ̊ contribute 90.4%, 90.6%, and 93.9% of the total three-body contributions for crystalline benzene, carbon dioxide, and triazine, respectively, for the coupled-cluster singles, doubles, and perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] method. For trimers with R min > 4 A ̊ , the second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) supplemented with the Axilrod–Teller–Muto (ATM) three-body dispersion correction reproduces the CCSD(T) values for the cumulative three-body contributions with errors of less than 0.1 kJ mol−1. Moreover, three-body contributions are converged within 0.15 kJ mol−1 by R max = 10 A ̊ . From these results, it appears that in molecular crystals where dispersion dominates the three-body contribution to the lattice energy, the trimers with R min > 4 A ̊ can be computed with the MP2+ATM method to reduce the computational cost, and those with R max > 10 A ̊ appear to be basically negligible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a two-dimensional (2D) inorganic molecular van der Waals crystal, Sb2O3 has been widely recognized as an excellent dielectric and encapsulation material due to its wide bandgap, high dielectric constant (κ), and remarkably high air stability. Considering the significance and potential application of Sb2O3 in future electronic devices, it is valuable to summarize its recent advancements. In this review, we present the latest progress on 2D Sb2O3 flakes and films, encompassing synthesis methods, physical properties, and device applications. First, preparation strategies such as chemical vapor deposition, vertical physical vapor deposition, thermal evaporation deposition, liquid metal synthesis, and atomic layer deposition growth routes are highlighted. Subsequently, the mechanical properties and the phase transition mechanisms of 2D Sb2O3 are presented. Moreover, device applications, including encapsulation layer, photodetector, and gate dielectric, are demonstrated. Finally, we outline the future challenges and research priorities of 2D Sb2O3 materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Perspective presents an overview of the development of the hierarchy of Davydov's Ansätze and a few of their applications in many-body problems in computational chemical physics. Davydov's solitons originated in the investigation of vibrational energy transport in proteins in the 1970s. Momentum-space projection of these solitary waves turned up to be accurate variational ground-state wave functions for the extended Holstein molecular crystal model, lending unambiguous evidence to the absence of formal quantum phase transitions in Holstein systems. The multiple Davydov Ansätze have been proposed, with increasing Ansatz multiplicity, as incremental improvements of their single-Ansatz parents. For a given Hamiltonian, the time-dependent variational formalism is utilized to extract accurate dynamic and spectroscopic properties using Davydov's Ansätze as its trial states. A quantity proven to disappear for large multiplicities, the Ansatz relative deviation is introduced to quantify how closely the Schrödinger equation is obeyed. Three finite-temperature extensions to the time-dependent variation scheme are elaborated, i.e., the Monte Carlo importance sampling, the method of thermofield dynamics, and the method of displaced number states. To demonstrate the versatility of the methodology, this Perspective provides applications of Davydov's Ansätze to the generalized Holstein Hamiltonian, variants of the spin-boson model, and systems of cavity-assisted singlet fission, where accurate dynamic and spectroscopic properties of the many-body systems are given by the Davydov trial states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing realistic quantum mechanical (QM) models of enzymes is dependent on reliably discerning and modeling residues, solvents, and cofactors important in crafting the active site microenvironment. Interatomic van der Waals contacts have previously demonstrated usefulness toward designing QM-models, but their measured values (and subsequent residue importance rankings) are expected to be influenceable by subtle changes in protein structure. Using chorismate mutase as a case study, this work examines the differences in ligand-residue interatomic contacts between an x-ray crystal structure and structures from a molecular dynamics simulation. Select structures are further analyzed using symmetry adapted perturbation theory to compute ab initio ligand-residue interaction energies. The findings of this study show that ligand-residue interatomic contacts measured for an x-ray crystal structure are not predictive of active site contacts from a sampling of molecular dynamics frames. In addition, the variability in interatomic contacts among structures is not correlated with variability in interaction energies. However, the results spotlight using interaction energies to characterize and rank residue importance in future computational enzymology workflows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the many-body expansion to predict crystal lattice energies (CLEs), a pleasantly parallel process, allows for flexibility in the choice of theoretical methods. Benchmark-level two-body contributions to CLEs of 23 molecular crystals have been computed using interaction energies of dimers with minimum inter-monomer separations (i.e., closest contact distances) up to 30 Å. In a search for ways to reduce the computational expense of calculating accurate CLEs, we have computed these two-body contributions with 15 different quantum chemical levels of theory and compared these energies to those computed with coupled-cluster in the complete basis set (CBS) limit. Interaction energies of the more distant dimers are easier to compute accurately and several of the methods tested are suitable as replacements for coupled-cluster through perturbative triples for all but the closest dimers. For our dataset, sub-kJ mol−1 accuracy can be obtained when calculating two-body interaction energies of dimers with separations shorter than 4 Å with coupled-cluster with single, double, and perturbative triple excitations/CBS and dimers with separations longer than 4 Å with MP2.5/aug-cc-pVDZ, among other schemes, reducing the number of dimers to be computed with coupled-cluster by as much as 98%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generalized energy-based fragmentation (GEBF) approach under periodic boundary conditions (PBCs) has been developed to facilitate calculations of molecular crystals containing large molecules. The PBC-GEBF approach can help predict structures and properties of molecular crystals at different theory levels by performing molecular quantum chemistry calculations on a series of non-periodic subsystems constructed from the studied systems. A more rigorous formula of the forces on translational vectors of molecular crystals was proposed and implemented, enabling more reliable predictions of crystal structures. Our benchmark results on several typical molecular crystals show that the PBC-GEBF approach could reproduce the forces on atoms and the translational vectors and the optimized crystal structures from the corresponding conventional periodic methods. The improved PBC-GEBF approach is then applied to predict the crystal structures and vibrational spectra of two molecular crystals containing large molecules. The PBC-GEBF approach can provide a satisfactory description on the crystal structure of a molecular crystal containing 312 atoms in a unit cell at density-fitting second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory and density functional theory (DFT) levels and the infrared vibrational spectra of another molecular crystal containing 864 atoms in a unit cell at the DFT level. The PBC-GEBF approach is expected to be a promising theoretical tool for electronic structure calculations on molecular crystals containing large molecules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce the combination of the density functional tight binding (DFTB) approach, including onsite correction (OC) and long-range corrected (LC) functional and the state-interaction state-averaged spin-restricted ensemble-referenced Kohn–Sham (SI-SA-REKS or SSR) method with extended active space involving four electrons and four orbitals [LC-OC-DFTB/SSR(4,4)], to investigate exciton couplings in multichromophoric systems, such as organic crystals and molecular aggregates. We employ the LC-OC-DFTB/SSR(4,4) method to calculate the excitonic coupling in anthracene and tetracene. As a result, the LC-OC-DFTB/SSR(4,4) method provides a reliable description of the locally excited (LE) state in a single chromophore and the excitonic couplings between chromophores with reasonable accuracy compared to the experiment and the conventional SSR(4,4) method. In addition, the thermal fluctuation of excitonic couplings from dynamic nuclear motion in an anthracene crystal with LC-OC-DFTB/SSR(4,4) shows a similar fluctuation of excitonic coupling and spectral density with those of first-principle calculations. We conclude that LC-OC-DFTB/SSR(4,4) is capable of providing reasonable features related to LE states, such as Frenkel exciton with efficient computational cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon nanothreads are the most exciting carbon based nanomaterials recently discovered. Obtained by compressing aromatics around 20 GPa, they are characterized by potentially exceptional mechanical properties. The reaction mechanisms have been partly elucidated through computational studies and x-ray diffraction experiments. However, in all these studies, the electronic modifications to which the molecule is subjected with increasing pressure are neglected as also if, and to which extent, the electronic excited states are involved in the high-pressure reactivity. In fact, the pressure increase induces remarkable changes in the electronic properties of molecular crystals, which are often directly related to the reaction's onset and path. We report the pressure evolution of the two-photon induced emission spectrum of crystalline stilbene, the archetype of a class of molecules from which double-core nanothreads are obtained, with the twofold purpose of gaining insight into the reaction mechanism and monitoring if the structural changes observed in x-ray diffraction studies have a detectable counterpart in the electronic properties of the system. The freezing of the spectral diffusion observed on rising pressure is ascribed to a hampered conformational rearrangement because of the larger stiffness of the local environment. The transition to the high pressure phase where the nanothreads form is revealed by the slope change of the pressure shift of all spectral components, while the progressive intensification with pressure of the 0-0 transition suggests a strengthening of the ethylenic bond favoring the charge delocalization on the benzene moieties, which is likely the trigger of the chemical instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frozen density embedding (FDE) is an embedding method for complex environments that is simple for users to set up. It reduces the computation time by dividing the total system into small subsystems and approximating the interaction by a functional of their densities. Its combination with wavefunction methods is, however, limited to small- or medium-sized molecules because of the steep scaling in computation time of these methods. To mitigate this limitation, we present a combination of the FDE approach with pair natural orbitals (PNOs) in the TURBOMOLE software package. It combines the uncoupled FDE (FDEu) approach for excitation energy calculations with efficient implementations of second-order correlation methods in the ricc2 and pnoccsd programs. The performance of this combination is tested for tetraazaperopyrene (TAPP) molecular crystals. It is shown that the PNO truncation error on environment-induced shifts is significantly smaller than the shifts themselves and, thus, that the local approximations of PNO-based wavefunction methods can without the loss of relevant digits be combined with the FDE method. Computational wall times are presented for two TAPP systems. The scaling of the wall times is compared to conventional supermolecular calculations and demonstrates large computational savings for the combination of FDE- and PNO-based methods. Additionally, the behavior of excitation energies with the system size is investigated. It is found that the excitation energies converge quickly with the size of the embedding environment for the TAPPs investigated in the current study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular spin systems based on photoexcited triplet pairs formed via singlet fission (SF) are attractive as carriers of quantum information because of their potentially pure and controllable spin polarization, but developing systems that offer optical routes to readout as well as initialization is challenging. Herein, we characterize the electron spin magnetic resonance change in the photoluminescence intensity for a tailored organic molecular crystal while sweeping a microwave drive up to 10 GHz in a broadband loop structure. We observe resonant transitions for both triplet and quintet spin sublevel populations showing their optical sensitivity and revealing the zero-field parameters for each. We map the evolution of these spectra in both microwave frequency and magnetic field, producing a pattern of optically detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) peaks. Fits to these data using a suitable model suggest significant spin polarization in this system with orientation selectivity. Unusual excitation intensity dependence is also observed, which inverts the sign of the ODMR signal for the triplet features, but not for the quintet. These observations demonstrate optical detection of the spin sublevel population dictated by SF and intermolecular geometry, and highlight anisotropic and multi-scale dynamics of triplet pairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The γ-surface represents the energetic cost associated with relative, rigid body sliding of crystal planes and contains useful information related to plastic deformation of the respective crystal. Here, we present γ-surfaces for the most active glide planes of the energetic molecular crystal cyclotetramethylene-tetranitramine in the monoclinic β phase, i.e., (101) and (011), at pressures up to 15 GPa. We observe the existence of stable staking faults in both planes and at all pressures and report the increase in the stacking fault energy with pressure. We also report the energetic barriers for sliding along minimum energy paths in various directions contained in these planes as well as the critical resolved shear stress at which the crystal becomes unstable in the absence of crystal defects. [100] traces of the γ-surface for multiple planes such as (001), (010), and (021) are further evaluated in view of the previously reported importance of this slip direction for dislocation cross-slip. It is observed that increasing the pressure does not modify the topology of the γ-surface in an essential way, which implies that although barriers for slip increase, the general phenomenology of dislocation motion is not modified qualitatively by the pressure. The energy barriers increase faster with pressure in the (011) plane, and hence, it is implied that the (101) plane is the most active glide plane at high pressures. The results are generally relevant for studies of plastic deformation in this molecular crystal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ice is one of the most important and interesting molecular crystals, exhibiting a rich and evolving phase diagram. Recent discoveries mean that there are now 20 distinct polymorphs; a structural diversity that arises from a delicate interplay of hydrogen bonding and van der Waals dispersion forces. This wealth of structures provides a stern test of electronic structure theories, with Density Functional Theory (DFT) often not able to accurately characterize the relative energies of the various ice polymorphs. Thanks to recent advances that enable the accurate and efficient treatment of molecular crystals with Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC), we present here the DMC-ICE13 dataset; a dataset of lattice energies of 13 ice polymorphs. This dataset encompasses the full structural complexity found in the ambient and high-pressure molecular ice polymorphs, and when experimental reference energies are available, our DMC results deliver sub-chemical accuracy. Using this dataset, we then perform an extensive benchmark of a broad range of DFT functionals. Of the functionals considered, revPBE-D3 and RSCAN reproduce reference absolute lattice energies with the smallest error, while optB86b-vdW and SCAN+rVV10 have the best performance on the relative lattice energies. Our results suggest that a single functional achieving reliable performance for all phases is still missing, and that care is needed in the selection of the most appropriate functional for the desired application. The insights obtained here may also be relevant to liquid water and other hydrogen-bonded and dispersion-bonded molecular crystals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Routinely assessing the stability of molecular crystals with high accuracy remains an open challenge in the computational sciences. The many-body expansion decomposes computation of the crystal lattice energy into an embarrassingly parallel collection of computations over molecular dimers, trimers, and so forth, making quantum chemistry techniques tractable for many crystals of small organic molecules. By examining the range-dependence of different types of energetic contributions to the crystal lattice energy, we can glean qualitative understanding of solid-state intermolecular interactions as well as practical, exploitable reductions in the number of computations required for accurate energies. Here, we assess the range-dependent character of two-body interactions of 24 small organic molecular crystals by using the physically interpretable components from symmetry-adapted perturbation theory (electrostatics, exchange-repulsion, induction/polarization, and London dispersion). We also examine correlations between the convergence rates of electrostatics and London dispersion terms with molecular dipole moments and polarizabilities, to provide guidance for estimating convergence rates in other molecular crystals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data-driven schemes that associate molecular and crystal structures with their microscopic properties share the need for a concise, effective description of the arrangement of their atomic constituents. Many types of models rely on descriptions of atom-centered environments, which are associated with an atomic property or with an atomic contribution to an extensive macroscopic quantity. Frameworks in this class can be understood in terms of atom-centered density correlations (ACDC), which are used as a basis for a body-ordered, symmetry-adapted expansion of the targets. Several other schemes that gather information on the relationship between neighboring atoms using "message-passing" ideas cannot be directly mapped to correlations centered around a single atom. We generalize the ACDC framework to include multi-centered information, generating representations that provide a complete linear basis to regress symmetric functions of atomic coordinates, and provide a coherent foundation to systematize our understanding of both atom-centered and message-passing and invariant and equivariant machine-learning schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many crystal structure prediction protocols only concern themselves with the electronic energy of molecular crystals. However, vibrational contributions to the free energy (Fvib) can be significant in determining accurate stability rankings for crystal candidates. While force-field studies have been conducted to gauge the magnitude of these free-energy corrections, highly accurate results from quantum mechanical methods, such as density-functional theory (DFT), are desirable. Here, we introduce the PV17 set of 17 polymorphic pairs of organic molecular crystals, for which plane wave DFT is used to calculate the vibrational free energies and free-energy differences (ΔFvib) between each pair. Our DFT results confirm that the vibrational free-energy corrections are small, having a mean value of 1.0 kJ/mol and a maximum value of 2.3 kJ/mol for the PV17 set. Furthermore, we assess the accuracy of a series of lower-cost DFT, semi-empirical, and force-field models for computing ΔFvib that have been proposed in the literature. It is found that calculating Fvib using the Γ-point frequencies does not provide ΔFvib values of sufficiently high quality. In addition, ΔFvib values calculated using various approximate methods have mean absolute errors relative to our converged DFT results of equivalent or larger magnitude than the vibrational free-energy corrections themselves. Thus, we conclude that, in a crystal structure prediction protocol, it is preferable to forego the inclusion of vibrational free-energy corrections than to estimate them with any of the approximate methods considered here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conformational polymorphs of organic molecular crystals represent a challenging test for quantum chemistry because they require careful balancing of the intra- and intermolecular interactions. This study examines 54 molecular conformations from 20 sets of conformational polymorphs, along with the relative lattice energies and 173 dimer interactions taken from six of the polymorph sets. These systems are studied with a variety of van der Waals-inclusive density functionals theory models; dispersion-corrected spin-component-scaled second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (SCS-MP2D); and domain local pair natural orbital coupled cluster singles, doubles, and perturbative triples [DLPNO-CCSD(T)]. We investigate how delocalization error in conventional density functionals impacts monomer conformational energies, systematic errors in the intermolecular interactions, and the nature of error cancellation that occurs in the overall crystal. The density functionals B86bPBE-XDM, PBE-D4, PBE-MBD, PBE0-D4, and PBE0-MBD are found to exhibit sizable one-body and two-body errors vs DLPNO-CCSD(T) benchmarks, and the level of success in predicting the relative polymorph energies relies heavily on error cancellation between different types of intermolecular interactions or between intra- and intermolecular interactions. The SCS-MP2D and, to a lesser extent, ωB97M-V models exhibit smaller errors and rely less on error cancellation. Implications for crystal structure prediction of flexible compounds are discussed. Finally, the one-body and two-body DLPNO-CCSD(T) energies taken from these conformational polymorphs establish the CP1b and CP2b benchmark datasets that could be useful for testing quantum chemistry models in challenging real-world systems with complex interplay between intra- and intermolecular interactions, a number of which are significantly impacted by delocalization error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kinetics of singlet fission (SF) in molecular semiconductors, i.e., spontaneous splitting of the excited singlet state into a pair of triplet (T) excitons, is known to be strongly affected by geminate annihilation of created TT-pairs. In our work, we analyze in detail the specific properties of SF-kinetics in highly anisotropic molecular crystals (in which T-excitons undergo strongly anisotropic hopping migration) within the earlier proposed two-state model (TSM). This model allows for accurate treatment of the characteristic effects of anisotropic relative migration of T-excitons and TT-interaction on SF-kinetics, describing these effects within the approximation, that assumes kinetic coupling of two states: the [TT]-state of interacting TT-pairs and the [T + T]-state of freely migrating T-excitons. The TSM makes it possible to represent the TT-migration and interaction effects in terms of lattice-migration Green's functions, accurate analytical formulas that are obtained in this work. The TSM is applied to the analysis of SF-kinetics in rubrene single crystals, recently measured in a wide range of times (0.1 ns < t < 104 ns). The analysis enables one to obtain important information on specific properties of SF-kinetics in highly anisotropic crystals. In particular, the observed specific "hump" of SF-kinetics at intermediate times can be treated as a manifestation of the TT-coupling in the [TT]-state. It is also found that the characteristic asymptotic time-dependence of SF-kinetics (∼ t − 3 / 2 ) can markedly be distorted by spin relaxation in TT-pairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to their improved accuracy, double-hybrid density functionals emerged as an important method for molecular electronic-structure calculations. The high computational costs of double-hybrid calculations in the condensed phase and the lack of efficient gradient implementations thereof inhibit a wide applicability for periodic systems. We present an implementation of forces and stress tensors for double-hybrid density functionals within the Gaussian and plane-waves electronic structure framework. The auxiliary density matrix method is used to reduce the overhead of the Hartree–Fock kernel providing an efficient and accurate methodology to tackle condensed phase systems. First applications to water systems of different densities and molecular crystals show the efficiency of the implementation and pave the way for advanced studies. Finally, we present large benchmark systems to discuss the performance of our implementation on modern large-scale computers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding of recently reported putative close-to-room-temperature superconductivity in C–S–H compounds at 267 GPa demands a reproducible synthesis protocol as well as knowledge of the compounds' structure and composition. We synthesized C–S–H compounds with various carbon compositions at high pressures from elemental carbon C and methane CH4, sulfur S, and molecular hydrogen H2. Here, we focus on compounds synthesized using methane as these allow a straightforward determination of their structure and composition by combining single-crystal x-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. We applied a two-stage synthesis of [(CH4)x(H2S)(1−x)]2H2 compounds with various compositions by first reacting sulfur and mixed methane–hydrogen fluids and forming CH4-doped H2S crystals at 0.5–3 GPa and then by growing single crystals of the desired hydrogen-rich compound. Raman spectroscopy applied to this material shows the presence of CH4 molecules incorporated into the lattice and allows the determination of the CH4 content, while single-crystal x-ray diffraction results suggest that the methane molecules substitute H2S molecules. The structural behavior of these compounds is very similar to the previously investigated methane-free crystals demonstrating a transition from Al2Cu type I4/mcm molecular crystal to a modulated molecular structure at 20–30 GPa and back to the same basic I4/mcm structure in an extended modification with greatly modified Raman spectra. This latter phase demonstrates a distortion into a Pnma structure at 132–159 GPa and then transforms into a common I m 3 ¯ m H3S phase at higher pressures; however, no structural anomaly is detected near 220 GPa, where a sharp upturn in Tc has been reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing variety of crystal structures has been observed in soft condensed matter over the past two decades, surpassing most expectations for the diversity of arrangements accessible through classical driving forces. Here, we survey the structural breadth of mesoscopic crystals—formed by micellar systems, nanoparticles, colloids, etc.—that have been observed in both soft matter experiments and coarse-grained self-assembly simulations. We review structure types that were found to mimic crystals on the atomic scale, as well as those that do not correspond to known geometries and seem to only occur on the mesoscale. While the number of crystal structure types observed in soft condensed matter still lags behind what is known from hard condensed matter, we hypothesize that the high tunability and diversity of building blocks that can be created on the nano- and microscale will render a structural variety that far exceeds that of atomic compounds, which are inevitably restricted by the "limitations" imposed by the periodic table of elements and by the properties of the chemical bond. An infusion of expertise in structural analysis from the field of crystallography into the soft condensed matter community will establish the common language necessary to report, compare, and organize the rapidly accruing structural knowledge gathered from simulations and experiments. The prospect of new materials created in soft matter and new, length-scale-spanning insights into the formation of ordered structures in both hard and soft condensed matter promise exciting new developments in the area of self-assembled mesoscale materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the interfacial thermal conductance of grain boundaries (GBs) between monolayer graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) sheets using a combined atomistic approach. First, realistic samples containing graphene/h-BN GBs with different tilt angles are generated using the phase-field crystal model developed recently [P. Hirvonen et al., Phys. Rev. B 100, 165412 (2019)] that captures slow diffusive relaxation inaccessible to molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Then, large-scale MD simulations using the efficient GPUMD package are performed to assess heat transport and rectification properties across the GBs. We find that lattice mismatch between the graphene and h-BN sheets plays a less important role in determining the interfacial thermal conductance as compared to the tilt angle. In addition, we find no significant thermal rectification effects for these GBs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in the synthesis of polar molecular materials have produced practical alternatives to ferroelectric ceramics, opening up exciting new avenues for their incorporation into modern electronic devices. However, in order to realize the full potential of polar polymer and molecular crystals for modern technological applications, it is paramount to assemble and evaluate all the available data for such compounds, identifying descriptors that could be associated with an emergence of ferroelectricity. In this paper, we utilized data-driven approaches to judiciously shortlist candidate materials from a wide chemical space that could possess ferroelectric functionalities. A machine learning study with importance sampling was employed to address the challenge of having a limited amount of available data on already-known organic ferroelectrics. Sets of molecular- and crystal-level descriptors were combined with a Random Forest Regression algorithm in order to predict the spontaneous polarization of the shortlisted compounds. First-principles simulations were performed to further validate the predictions obtained from the machine learning model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Granular molecular crystals show a large variation in the orientation, length, shape, and cohesive interactions of interfaces when embedded in a polymer matrix. But the determination of the associated excess of free energy is not straightforward, especially due to the entropic contribution which is not negligible for molecular compounds. The surface free energy (SFE) is also important to predict crystal shapes and growth or to prove crucial insights into the mesoscale interfaces in the granular composites often with interfacial defects, voids, and pores. In this paper, we use Molecular Dynamics (MD) and assess and adapt two non-equilibrium methods, namely, non-equilibrium thermodynamic integration (NETI) and modified steered MD (SMD), to determine the SFE of various facets of a high-energy molecular crystal of interest: β-HMX. Starting with defect-free surfaces, both methods agree well with experiment concerning the most stable facets, whose energy is further lowered by a large entropic contribution. For some facets, surface creation (debonding process) and annihilation (bonding process) show fundamentally different paths, henceforth irreversible. Then, we discuss some sources of discrepancy between theoretical and experimental SFE, considering non-reversible dissipative events, surface roughness, and differences between various experimental techniques. These non-equilibrium methods can be applied to a wide range of molecular crystals and to study interface stability in polycrystals or with binding polymers, including the effects of various defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many-body potential energy functions (MB-PEFs), which integrate data-driven representations of many-body short-range quantum mechanical interactions with physics-based representations of many-body polarization and long-range interactions, have recently been shown to provide high accuracy in the description of molecular interactions from the gas to the condensed phase. Here, we present MB-Fit, a software infrastructure for the automated development of MB-PEFs for generic molecules within the TTM-nrg (Thole-type model energy) and MB-nrg (many-body energy) theoretical frameworks. Besides providing all the necessary computational tools for generating TTM-nrg and MB-nrg PEFs, MB-Fit provides a seamless interface with the MBX software, a many-body energy and force calculator for computer simulations. Given the demonstrated accuracy of the MB-PEFs, particularly within the MB-nrg framework, we believe that MB-Fit will enable routine predictive computer simulations of generic (small) molecules in the gas, liquid, and solid phases, including, but not limited to, the modeling of quantum isomeric equilibria in molecular clusters, solvation processes, molecular crystals, and phase diagrams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the density functional theory, dispersion corrected semilocal approximations are often used to benchmark weekly interacting finite and extended systems. Here, the focus is on providing a broad overview of the performance of D3 dispersion corrected revised Tao–Mo (revTM) semilocal functionals [A. Patra et al., J. Chem. Phys. 153, 084 117 (2020)] for thermochemistry and kinetics of molecules, molecular crystals, ice polymorphs, metal–organic systems, atom/molecular adsorption on solids, water interacting with nano-materials, binding energies of layered materials, and properties of weekly and strongly bonded solids. We show that the most suitable "optimized power" function for the revTM functional needs a modification to make it suitable for properties related to the diverse nature of finite and extended systems. The present work is an extension of the previously proposed revTM+D3 method with the motivation to design and benchmark the dispersion corrected cost-effective method based on this semilocal approximation. We show that the revised revTM+D3 functional provides various general purpose molecular and solid properties with the closest to experimental findings than its predecessor. The present assessment and benchmarking can be practically useful for performing cost-effective method based simulations of various molecular and solid-state properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computationally inexpensive particle-based coarse-grained (CG) models are essential for use in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of mesoscopically slow cooperative phenomena, such as plastic deformations in solids. Molecular crystals possessing complex symmetry present enormous practical challenges for particle-based coarse-graining at molecularly resolved scales, when each molecule is in a single-site representation, and beyond. Presently, there is no published pairwise non-bonded single-site CG potential that is able to predict the space group and structure of a molecular crystal. In this paper, we present a successful coarse-graining at a molecular level from first principles of an energetic crystal, hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-s-triazine (RDX) in the alpha phase, using the force-matching-based multiscale coarse-graining (MSCG/FM) approach. The new MSCG/FM model, which implements an optimal pair decomposition of the crystal Helmholtz free energy potential in molecular center-of-mass coordinates, was obtained by force-matching atomistic MD simulations of liquid, amorphous, and crystalline states and in a wide range of pressures (up to 20 GPa). The MSCG/FM potentials for different pressures underwent top-down optimization to fine-tune the mechanical and thermodynamic properties, followed by consolidation into a transferable density-dependent model referred to as RDX-TC-DD (RDX True-Crystal Density-Dependent). The RDX-TC-DD model predicts accurately the crystal structure of α-RDX at room conditions and reproduces the atomistic reference system under isothermal (300 K) hydrostatic compression up to 20 GPa, in particular, the Pbca symmetry of α-RDX in the elastic regime. The RDX-TC-DD model was then used to simulate the plastic response of uniaxially ([100]) compressed α-RDX resulting in nanoscale shear banding, a key mechanism for plastic deformation and defect-free detonation initiation proposed for many molecular crystalline explosives. Additionally, a comparative analysis of the effect of core-softening of the RDX-TC-DD potential and the degree of molecular rigidity in the all-atom treatment suggests a stress-induced short-range softening of the effective intermolecular interaction as a fundamental cause of plastic instability in α-RDX. The reported RDX-TC-DD model and overall workflow to develop it open up possibilities to perform high quality simulation studies of molecular energetic materials under thermal and mechanical stimuli, including extreme conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geometry optimization is an important part of both computational materials and surface science because it is the path to finding ground state atomic structures and reaction pathways. These properties are used in the estimation of thermodynamic and kinetic properties of molecular and crystal structures. This process is slow at the quantum level of theory because it involves an iterative calculation of forces using quantum chemical codes such as density functional theory (DFT), which are computationally expensive and which limit the speed of the optimization algorithms. It would be highly advantageous to accelerate this process because then one could do either the same amount of work in less time or more work in the same time. In this work, we provide a neural network (NN) ensemble based active learning method to accelerate the local geometry optimization for multiple configurations simultaneously. We illustrate the acceleration on several case studies including bare metal surfaces, surfaces with adsorbates, and nudged elastic band for two reactions. In all cases, the accelerated method requires fewer DFT calculations than the standard method. In addition, we provide an Atomic Simulation Environment (ASE)-optimizer Python package to make the usage of the NN ensemble active learning for geometry optimization easier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The physical phenomenon of spin-crossover in molecular crystals is a multiscale process whose properties rely on the supramolecular organization of the spin-crossover active elements, their interactions within the crystal packing, and their dynamics. The delicate balance between short-range and long-range structural reorganizations upon the spin transition is at the origin of remarkable and fascinating physical phenomena such as thermal, light-induced and pressure-induced hysteresis, multi-step transitions, or multimetastablility. A complete understanding of the various phenomena associated with spin-crossover requires a comprehensive and thorough characterization of the overall structural architecture at all scales, which goes beyond the average static crystal structure. This Tutorial surveys the practical use of x-ray crystallography notably in non-ambient conditions to provide a direct view of the physical processes operating in spin-crossover molecular solids from bulk single crystals to nanocrystalline powder. Advanced x-ray crystallography methods are reviewed and illustrated with a series of model examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thermal stability and pressure-dependent changes are key to molecular crystals and their properties. The determination of their thermal properties from ab initio methods is, however, a challenging task. While the low-frequency phonon spectrum related to intermolecular vibrations remains difficult to describe, the Quasi-Harmonic Approximation (QHA) also induces for molecular crystals a significant volume deviation, which makes their thermal behavior ill-determined. To overcome these difficulties, we consider a pragmatic energy correction (EC) that has long been used for atomic crystals, and we presently report the first ever use for molecular crystals. Applying the QHA in dispersion-corrected density functional theory (DFT-D) calculations with an ab initio parameterized EC, the resulting model can simultaneously and accurately derive thermal and mechanical properties of high-explosive molecular crystals. When compared to experiments, the mean absolute percent error of previous DFT-based thermomechanical models is 12% for mechanical and 31% for thermal properties. Our model performs significantly better and reduces these uncertainties to 4.1% and 9.8%, respectively. In particular, the agreement between our model and experiments for the thermal properties is three times better. This significant improvement greatly benefits the determination of thermomechanical properties such as the Grüneisen parameter and the shock properties. The method has been successfully applied to molecular crystals showing a large diversity of weak intermolecular interactions (β-1,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazoctane (HMX), α-1,1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethylene (FOX-7), Triaminotrinitrobenzene (TATB), ε-Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane (CL20), and Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN)-I). Due to its accuracy and transferability, our model is expected to work for a large class of computationally designed molecular crystals and co-crystals, providing a basis for a predictive framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]